“For more than a decade, we have executed hundreds of changes together with our customers. Based on that experience, we have learned that the most important factor of successful change is always a human being. It has led us to our approach, which is built around people and crystallizes the essence of change. We call it People-driven change,” says CCEA’s CEO Reetta Rajala.
People-driven change describes CCEA’s way to think and work with each change we implement, as well as our way to lead change portfolios and develop organizations’ change capability.
There are four fields to our approach explaining both the strategic and operational levels, as well as the foundational and enabling levels. It highlights the focus areas we need to operate in to make changes happen.
Motivation & importance: It is essential to as early as possible engage with all the relevant groups, and together transform the vision defined by leaders and developers into a concrete purpose that motivates people.
Capacity & load: Each new change reduces the bandwidth and removes energy from something else. Hence, it is indispensable, both in individual changes and in change portfolio management, to understand how much load each change presents, and which changes can be implemented simultaneously without overloading the organization.
Details & practise: Understanding the progress and activity of the change project is neither relevant for business nor the change target groups. Instead, the essential is to understand what changes for them, why and how they must work differently in the future, and what they need to do to make the change happen. It is important to understand that the change in most cases looks different for different groups, and that is why the change needs to be interpreted separately for each group.
Commitment & capability: Equally important to learning the new, is to unlearn the old. Change will only happen when people take the ownership of it, understand what it is about, are able to work in the new way, and have the know-how to act. People engage and commit when they feel they have an impact on the change, not being pushed over by it.
“Everything we deliver is based on the idea that people are willing to change and can change. Our core know-how is to relentlessly help the organizations to root the change in the organization. One person at a time, if needed,” Reetta highlights.
